Christoph Marthaler

Isoldes Abendbrot

There is hardly a daydream passing through the heads of those wide awake more frequently (and more secretly) than staging one’s own disappearance. This entails complicated questions: how might it work to leave one’s familiar surroundings without the slightest trace, inventing a new existence far from what one is used to? How intricate would such an undertaking be? And would one be able to bear staying far away from the people and surroundings one has abandoned? The figures in Christoph Marthaler’s piece introduce themselves to each other as having disappeared with all consequences, and being relieved at their new beginnings – yet something seems odd. Not least because the only lady among this circle of disappeared persons is named Isolde, who gives a castle named Kareol as her last place of residence.